[Daily] Tether has the last laugh

Good morning! Welcome to The Daily Moon. Dubai is pretty serious about its metaverse plans. Last year, the government opened its headquarters in the virtual universe. Now, the city is ready with a metaverse mall that will host brands such as Carrefour and Samsung. We wonder if the Samsung TV will be sold in its NFT avatar?

As of Wednesday, 8PM IST

The markets recovered from the regulatory uncertainty. Bitcoin regained momentum and Ethereum seemed to be ready for the Shanghai upgrade buzz. Nasdaq fell in early trade on fears of a long inflation-reversal period. Back home, Sensex and Nifty ended higher on buying across stocks.

ETH Gets Beary Jitters

After what was a good run in January, it looks like Ethereum’s bull rally has hit pause. The token fell ~7% over the past seven days and rumours of a staking ban is killing all the love.

Why the hate, bro?ETH is used as a staked token in DeFi contracts. So if staking is banned, it’ll affect the demand of the second-largest crypto. Traders have gone short, meaning that they expect Ethereum prices to fall further. From a bullish sentiment just a few weeks ago, it’s edged closer to the bears.

And supply is low There is a drop in the amount of ETH available ahead of the Shanghai upgrade. ETH availability on exchanges has slipped 37% since the Merge in September 2022. This is typically good news, but ETH has been on a pendulum for a while. Supply dwindles, then overflows.

In related news…Lido, which is Ethereum’s largest staking pool, will decide whether or not to sell or stake its $30 million in staked Ether. A bulk sale of the ETH holdings will lead to a price slump.

ICYMI A Bored Ape owner “burned” his $169,000 worth NFT to remove it from the ETH network. He claims that his Ape now exists on the Ordinals project on Bitcoin. As usual, Bored Apes’ creator Yuga Labs called it ‘unlicensed’.

Tether's The Real Winner

There is chatter about stablecoins. Paxos' BUSD is in trouble. And that's turned out to be good news for Tether. Its USDT stablecoin has seen a sudden interest now that the options in the market are limited.

What's the connection? One less competitor for Tether to deal with. Tether's USDT has gained over $1 billion in market cap ever since the SEC news. What’s also attracted investors is its latest proof of reserves that show that 82% of its reserves are in US government bonds. It also reduced dependence on non-US Treasury bonds by 50%.

Source: CoinMarketCap

But why now?We know that the SEC has doubled-down on crypto assets. Tether’s a bit different from the rest because its parent company is in Hong Kong. The SEC doesn’t have international jurisdiction so many have switched to Tether to escape the regulator.

UK Watchdog Dislikes Crypto ATMs

Nobody is happy with crypto things. Regulators, watchdogs, investors, and who knows who else? The Financial Conduct Authority in the UK recently cracked down on unregistered crypto ATM operators.

Unregistered=illegalThe watchdog regulates the financial services industry in the UK and it says the crypto ATMs it acted on were illegal. The crypto ATM operators have been warned that “any breach of regulations would result in an investigation under money-laundering regulations”.

What are crypto ATMs?They’re like ATM machines that allow customers to buy or convert traditional currencies into crypto assets, including bitcoin. Considering the no-love-lost relationship crypto has with regulators worldwide, this does sound like something that wouldn’t change those feelings.

A Bitcoin Embassy In The US?

The government of El Salvador is opening a “Bitcoin Embassy” in the United States. And this is not even the first time. In October 2022, it signed a memorandum of understanding with a pro-Bitcoin Swiss city.

So now the US will accept Bitcoin?Uh, not really. El Salvador is signing a partnership with the government of Texas (of all places). The Bitcoin Embassy is basically El Salvador’s representative office in Texas. It will work on new joint projects to promote Bitcoin adoption.

Texas likes Bitcoin?Texas is doing things to promote crypto. Including proposals such as no tax on crypto purchases. It has proposed a plan for expansion of the blockchain industry. Of course, El Salvador adopted Bitcoin as legal tender in 2021. The results were mixed, but the experience will definitely be a positive in planning new partnerships. Still some way away from buying your Starbucks with Bitcoin.

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